vSphere High Performance Cookbook - Second Edition

Book description

Over 80 recipes to help you improve vSphere 6.5's performance and solve problems before they arise

About This Book

  • The practical recipes provide cost-effective and high performance for any application running in a virtual machine
  • Contains best practices and troubleshooting techniques to resolve vSphere 6.5 performance issues
  • Get a comprehensive coverage of performance issues and solutions including vCenter Server design and virtual machine and application tuning

Who This Book Is For

If you are a system administrator and are planning to deploy vSphere 6.5 in your organization and want to maximize its performance, then this book is for you. Prior knowledge of the vSphere 6.5 concepts is essential.

What You Will Learn

  • Understand the VMM Scheduler, cache aware CPU Scheduler, NUMA aware CPU Scheduler, and more during the CPU Performance Design phase
  • Get to know the virtual memory reclamation technique, host ballooning monitoring, and swapping activity
  • Choose the right platform while designing your vCenter Server, redundant vCenter design, and vCenter SSO and its deployment
  • Learn how to use various performance simulation tools
  • Design VCSA Server Certificates to minimize security threats
  • Use health check tools for storage and boost vSphere 6.5's performance with VAAI and VASA

In Detail

vSphere is a mission-critical piece of software for many businesses. It is a complex tool, and incorrect design and deployment can create performance related issues that can negatively affect the business. This book is focused on solving these problems as well as providing best practices and performance-enhancing techniques. This edition is fully updated to include all the new features in version 6.5 as well as the latest tools and techniques to keep vSphere performing at its best.

This book starts with interesting recipes, such as the interaction of vSphere 6.5 components with physical layers such as CPU, memory, and networking. Then we focus on DRS, resource control design, and vSphere cluster design. Next, you'll learn about storage performance design and how it works with VMware vSphere 6.5. Moving on, you will learn about the two types of vCenter installation and the benefits of each. Lastly, the book covers performance tools that help you get the most out of your vSphere installation.

By the end of this book, you will be able to identify, diagnose, and troubleshoot operational faults and critical performance issues in vSphere 6.5.

Style and approach

This cookbook is written in a practical, helpful style with numerous recipes focusing on answering and providing solutions to common and not-so-common performance issues and problems.

Table of contents

  1. Preface
    1. What this book covers
    2. What you need for this book
    3. Who this book is for
    4. Sections
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
      4. There's more…
      5. See also
    5. Conventions
    6. Reader feedback
    7. Customer support
      1. Downloading the color images of this book
      2. Errata
      3. Piracy
      4. Questions
  2. CPU Performance Design
    1. Introduction
    2. Critical performance consideration - VMM scheduler
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
      3. How it works...
      4. There's more...
    3. CPU scheduler - processor topology/cache-aware
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
      3. How it works...
    4. Ready time - warning sign
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
      3. How it works...
    5. Spotting CPU overcommitment
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
      3. How it works...
    6. Fighting guest CPU saturation in SMP VMs
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
      3. How it works...
    7. Controlling CPU resources using resource settings
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
    8. What is most important to monitor in CPU performance
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
    9. CPU performance best practices
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
  3. Memory Performance Design
    1. Introduction
    2. Virtual memory reclamation techniques
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
        1. TPS
        2. Memory ballooning
    3. Monitoring a host-swapping activity
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
      4. There's more…
    4. Monitoring a host-ballooning activity
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
      4. There's more…
    5. Keeping memory free for VMkernel
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
    6. Key memory performance counters to monitor
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
    7. What counters not to use
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    8. Identifying when memory is the problem
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    9. Analyzing host and VM memory
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
    10. Memory performance best practices
      1. How to do it…
    11. Introduction
    12. Virtual memory reclamation techniques
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
        1. TPS
        2. Memory ballooning
    13. Monitoring a host-swapping activity
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
      4. There's more…
    14. Monitoring a host-ballooning activity
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
      4. There's more…
    15. Keeping memory free for VMkernel
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
    16. Key memory performance counters to monitor
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
    17. What counters not to use
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    18. Identifying when memory is the problem
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    19. Analyzing host and VM memory
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
    20. Memory performance best practices
      1. How to do it…
  4. Networking Performance Design
    1. Introduction
    2. Designing a vSphere Standard Switch for load balancing and failover
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
      3. How it works...
        1. Route based on the originating virtual port (default policy)
        2. Route based on source MAC hash
        3. Route based on IP hash
        4. Using the explicit failover order
        5. Link status only (default)
        6. Beacon probing
    3. Designing a vSphere Distributed Switch for load balancing and failover
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
      3. How it works...
    4. What to know when offloading checksum
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
      3. How it works...
    5. Selecting the correct virtual network adapter
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
      3. How it works...
    6. Improving performance through VMDirectPath I/O
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
    7. Improving performance through NetQueue
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
      3. How it works...
    8. Improving network performance using the SplitRx mode for multicast traffic
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
      3. How it works...
    9. Designing a multi-NIC vMotion
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    10. Improving network performance using network I/O control
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
    11. Monitoring network capacity and performance matrix
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
  5. DRS, SDRS, and Resource Control Design
    1. Introduction
    2. Using DRS algorithm guidelines
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
      3. How it works...
    3. Using resource pool guidelines
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works...
    4. Avoiding the use of a resource pool as a folder structure
      1. How to do it...
      2. How it works...
    5. Choosing the best SIOC latency threshold
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
      3. How it works...
    6. Using storage capability and policy-driven storage
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
      3. How it works...
    7. Anti-affinity rules in the SDRS cluster
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
    8. Avoiding the use of the SDRS I/O metric and array-based automatic tiering together
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
    9. Using VMware SIOC and array-based automatic tiering together
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...
      3. How it works...
  6. vSphere Cluster Design
    1. Introduction
    2. Trade-off factors while designing scale-up and scale-out clusters
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
    3. Using VM Monitoring
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    4. vSphere Fault Tolerance design and its impact
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
    5. DPM and its impact
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
    6. Choosing the reserved cluster failover capacity
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
      4. See also
    7. Choosing the correct vSphere HA cluster size
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
  7. Storage Performance Design
    1. Introduction
    2. Designing the host for a highly available and high-performance storage
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    3. Designing a highly available and high-performance iSCSI SAN
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
        1. Jumbo frames
        2. Pause frames
        3. TCP-delayed Ack
      3. How it works…
    4. Designing a highly available and high-performance FC storage
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
        1. RAID level data protection
    5. Performance impact of queuing on the storage array and host
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
    6. Factors that affect storage performance
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    7. Using VAAI or VASA to boost storage performance
      1. Atomic test and set
      2. Clone blocks/full copy/XCOPY
      3. Zero blocks/write same
      4. Getting ready
      5. How to do it…
      6. How it works…
    8. Selecting the right VM disk type
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
    9. Monitoring command queuing
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. How it works…
    10. Identifying a severely overloaded storage
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    11. Setting up VVols
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    12. Introduction to vSAN
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    13. Health check for vSAN
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
  8. Designing vCenter on Windows for Best Performance
    1. Introduction
    2. Things to bear in mind while designing the vCenter platform
      1. How to do it…
    3. Deploying Platform Services Controller
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    4. Deploying the vCenter server components
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    5. Designing vCenter server for redundancy
      1. How to do it…
    6. Designing a highly available vCenter database
      1. How to do it…
    7. vCenter database size and location affects performance
      1. How to do it…
    8. Using vSphere 6.x Certificate Manager for certificates
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. See also
    9. Designing vCenter server for Auto Deploy
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
  9. Designing VCSA for Best Performance
    1. Introduction
    2. Deploying Platform Services Controller
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    3. Deploying VCSA server components
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    4. Setting up vCenter Server High Availability
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    5. Adding VCSA to your Windows domain and adding users
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    6. Checking VCSA performance using vimtop
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    7. Checking VCSA performance using the GUI
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
  10. Virtual Machine and Virtual Environment Performance Design
    1. Introduction
    2. Setting the right time in Guest OS
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    3. Virtual NUMA considerations
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. See also
    4. Choosing the SCSI controller for storage
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    5. Impact of VM swap file placement
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    6. Using large pages in VMs
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    7. Guest OS networking considerations
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. See also
    8. When you should or should not virtualize an application
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    9. Measuring the environment's performance
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. See also
  11. Performance Tools
    1. Introduction
    2. PowerCLI - introduction
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. See also
    3. PowerCLI scripts
      1. How it works…
        1. PowerCLI Scripts – one-liner
        2. PowerCLI Scripts – multiline
    4. PowerCLI for Docker
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. See also
    5. HCIBench
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    6. Runecast
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
    7. Iometer
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it…
      3. See also
    8. VMware IOInsight
      1. Getting ready
      2. How to do it...

Product information

  • Title: vSphere High Performance Cookbook - Second Edition
  • Author(s): Kevin Elder, Christopher Kusek, Prasenjit Sarkar
  • Release date: June 2017
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781786464620